


Reacquaintance

by syrupwit



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Accidental Marriage, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Post-Dishonored (Video Game), Pre-Dishonored 2 (Video Game), Woke Up Married After A Drunk Night
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-23 13:15:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20008876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/syrupwit/pseuds/syrupwit
Summary: “Lurk,” he said, and she startled back. She hadn’t heard that voice in almost a decade. “Are you going to sit there breathing on me, or are you coming to bed?”





	Reacquaintance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kay_obsessive](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kay_obsessive/gifts).



Meagan Foster’s first impulse on waking was to go back to sleep. The bed was soft, her limbs were weighed down with leftover drunkenness, and the slumbering mass at her back radiated a reassuringly inert heat. However, a growing pressure in her bladder demanded release, so she kicked off the blankets and lurched to the toilet.

Ablutions concluded, she examined herself in the mirror. Her hair was wild, eyes dark and puffy from what had apparently been a long evening. New bruises on her neck didn’t hurt when she pressed them. Her breast band was missing from under her shirt. Inspection yielded more bruises and tender spots across her body, but the emergency knives were strapped securely to her thigh and there was no soreness between her legs. Good.

Meagan drank from the bathroom tap, grimacing at the taste, and splashed water on her face. She was beginning to realize that her hangover was worse than she’d initially thought. Her memory of the previous night was a big blank, even as she struggled to recall it. Another lead on Ashworth had turned out to be a red herring, that was clear enough. Then Meagan had broken up a street fight, and then she’d gone for a drink to relax… She had nothing beyond that. At least she had made it back to her inn room. Perhaps her guest would have more insight on recent events.

He—that broad frame clearly belonged to a man, rare for her—was fast asleep when she returned to the main room. Meagan tried to walk softly so as not to alert him. This was a bit harder than usual, what with her impaired balance. She ended up tripping over her own feet and barely caught herself with both hands on the bed. The man stirred, but didn’t wake.

Meagan waited, holding her breath. He didn’t move. She drew herself up on the bed and crawled over to him. He still didn’t move. She saw his bare shoulder, the line of his ear. At his temple, under graying hair longer than customary, the start of a scar.

Oh.

Oh, no.

“Lurk,” he said, and she startled back. She hadn’t heard that voice in almost a decade. “Are you going to sit there breathing on me, or are you coming to bed?”

Very suddenly, Meagan perceived that she had developed a splitting headache.

* * *

Daud appeared disinclined to murder her, at least once she stopped pacing around the room and laid down. He was also hungover, perhaps even more profoundly than Meagan, and likewise professed a limited recollection of the night’s events. He had seen her break up the fight, he said, and then tailed her to the town's only bar with the intention of spying on her. He didn’t remember anything further.

They were both in Serkonos for business. Not the old sort of business, with stabbing and double-crossing nobles and so on; they’d both left that behind. Instead it was self-directed business. Meagan was working to track down old allies of Delilah’s, and had stopped at a small port town in the east for ship repairs. Daud was doing... something. It was odd work, mystical—Outsider-related—and while she had often heard him curse the Black-Eyed Bastard’s name, it had never been with such trembling, agitated force. Though the emotion may have been directed at his hangover.

They avoided discussing some topics. First: Billie Lurk’s betrayal, which was not water under the bridge as much as a thick, sludgy morass of guilt, regrets, and viscera (so, the Wrenhaven). Second: people they knew in common, most specifically Thomas, who they had both likely seen and both likely pledged to secrecy. Third: their respective states of partial undress and the related physical evidence. Meagan couldn’t say she had never entertained certain fantasies, particularly in her youth, but Daud had always seemed exempt from that kind of thing. Apparently he wasn’t.

She could tell because of the path his eyes took. First, they would dart down to her chest; then they’d snag on the most vibrant among the several bruises blooming on her neck; then they would flick back to her face, unreadable as ever. Huh.

It was uncomfortably easy to share space again. They traded stints in the bathroom, found a cup and shared water from it, and alternated groaning out complaints with lying as still as possible. At some length they mustered the joint strength to sit up. Daud lit a cigarette, which Meagan objected to until he gave her one too.

Around midday, they rediscovered their appetites. Both were disciplined in their tastes, inclined to survive on the leanest fare, but the scent of roasting meat from a street food vendor wafted through the open window at just the right time to tempt them.

They dressed quickly, backs to each other. Meagan found her breast band under a side table. She was just putting on her boots when her right foot’s progress was impeded by a strange lump.

Meagan lifted her right boot and shook it. The object remained lodged. She stuck her hand in and pried out a balled-up piece of paper. It was closed with a wax seal, or at least once had been. Carefully, she unrolled the paper, managing to tear it only once. She read it. She read it again.

“Daud,” she said.

Daud hadn’t got his coat on yet. He took the paper and read it. A muscle twitched in his jaw.

“Let’s eat first, and then we can deal with this,” he said.

* * *

Neither Billie Lurk nor Meagan Foster had ever given much thought to marriage. Objectively, Meagan considered it a negative or neutral institution, when she considered it at all. Subjectively, personally, she would have said it wasn’t for her. And yet.

And yet! As she walked by Daud’s side through the streets of a town whose name they couldn’t agree on (Messena? Navinna?), honing in on the food vendor’s location through an alliance of smell and instinct, she felt a _sentiment._ It was against her will, and probably a consequence of the alcohol lingering in her system, but it could not be denied. At least, until she smashed it.

It was a mild day in the Month of Nets. The afternoon breeze smuggled an undercurrent of sweetness among the stronger scents of sea salt, rotten fish, and burning oil. The town was tiny and old, but not impoverished, and the abundance of flourishing vegetation spoke to an enduring fertility. It hadn’t been skinned and gutted, hollowed out, like Dunwall had, but it wasn’t so new as to be hostile either. It felt like people had lived here comfortably for thousands of years, and might continue comfortably for thousands more.

They caught up with the vendor at the entrance to a narrow lane winding down to the beach. There, they spent far too long fumbling coin from various pockets to pay for kebabs, flatbread, and a paper cone of fried plantains oozing fruit-dark syrup. The last were almost too rich to eat, sweet and dense with a crust of southern spices. Somewhere deep in Meagan’s mind, a hungry girl thought of wedding cake.

“Next thing we do is get that thing dissolved,” said Daud, meaning the marriage certificate. A patting of flour from the flatbread dusted his chin. Meagan noted the shine of grease on his lip. She wondered if she’d ever seen him eat with such indelicacy. Unlikely; among the Whalers, Daud had always been as private as he was practical. It should have disgusted her. Ten years ago, it might have.

“Right,” said Meagan, fixing her eyes toward the ocean as Daud bit into a plantain.

The hungry girl said: _My husband should share. Take the remainder from him._ Meagan busied herself with the spice-sugar dregs at the cone's tip.

Daud said, "If anyone had to be here with me, I'm glad it's you."

They licked their fingers clean and headed to the mayor’s office.

* * *

The mayor’s office was also the records office, post office, travel bureau, and courthouse, conveniently located right next door to the single-celled jail. The faded brick walls smelled of dust and cigars, and the thin, high windows let in slats of burning sunlight. A spectacled clerk behind a mesh-screened counter guarded a hallway to the back rooms.

“I’m sorry,” said the clerk, whose absent colleague had apparently wed them outside the bar not eighteen hours previously. “But there’s nothing I can do.”

“Is that so,” said Daud, in a dry tone that made Meagan’s hands itch toward her weapons.

“The marriage can only be legally annulled by an agent of His Grace, an Overseer, or barring either of those an official decree from the Empress. We don’t have any of those here. Your closest bet would be Karnaca.” The clerk smiled, but there was sweat on his forehead. Had he been sweating before?

Warning prickled at the back of Meagan’s neck. From the minute tensing of Daud’s stance, she knew he felt it as well.

She whirled around, just in time to intercept a broken bottle as it was swung by a large man bearing down on them.

* * *

It came to light that their officiant had recognized Daud last night, and thence roped a few buddies into trying to collect the outstanding price on his head. The would-be bounty hunters were quickly convinced that this plan had been unsound. Meagan and Daud left the mayor’s office a few dozen coin richer and none the worse for wear, though the same could not be said of their (living, but unhappy) assailants.

In silence they wandered down to the beach and visited the little shipyard. It was quiet, and the mechanic greeted them with equanimity. Waves lapped gently at the rocky shore. The _Dreadful Wale_ would be seaworthy by morning. The shadows were getting long, and Meagan’s blood still ran hot from the fight. She could feel Daud’s eyes on her, and their shoulders brushed as they walked. She wondered—but no. She wouldn’t ask.

They bought figs and more flatbread from the same vendor, who treated them with newly visible curiosity. Heads turned as they moved through town, but no one interfered in their path. The sun was setting, but the bar was closed when they passed it.

When they were safely back in the inn room—Daud having bolted the door latch, Meagan all the windows save one cracked to let in air—she asked him, “Where are you headed now?”

“Not sure.” Daud sat on the bed and began taking off his boots. “Karnaca, eventually, but I have errands on the way.”

“My next stop is Karnaca.” Meagan set her back to him and shed her jacket. She unlaced her boots and stepped out of them, feeling oddly self-conscious. “I could take you.”

“We’d be recognized. The world's not all that big. Besides, we've work to do still. It's not time yet.” Fabric rustled as he continued to undress.

“Time for what, old man?” said Meagan, not expecting an answer. Her words dried up when she turned and saw him. He had stripped down to his underclothes, his hair sweaty and disheveled, marks human and occult visible on his skin. He finally looked more like a man than a knife.

“Billie?” he said. A new question hung between them.

Meagan Foster already knew her reply. She pulled her shirt and breast band over her head, took a second to thrill at his expression, and crossed the room in two strides.

Daud's mouth opening under hers tasted sweeter than any wine.

* * *

Later she found her emergency knives under the bed.

* * *

A few years later than that—when they had met again under false names at a factory in Cullero, at a farmhouse just outside Potterstead in the depths of winter, and once on a pirate ship in the middle of open waters, all without returning to Karnaca until that point, and Meagan was calling herself Billie Lurk again—it was time.


End file.
